Improving Hr StrategyEssay Preview: Improving Hr StrategyReport this essayImproving HR StrategyWith employee turnover costs high, a company must take steps to keep their best folks. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the importance of making leadership development, team building, and diversity fundamental parts of a companys human resource management strategy. These initiatives help promote belonging, loyalty, and employee development, key factors in retaining quality people. A case in point is Aramark, a leading provider of outsourcing services. The company has made these strategic inputs an integral part of its human resources vision. Aramark is not the only company changing the way they manage their personnel. Their vision is a trend sweeping across corporate America.
As a manager of a human resources department, leadership development, team building, and diversity initiatives would be very important parts of my retention strategy. There are several reasons for this. The goal of retention is to keep your best and brightest folks with your company. Developing leadership can work to align personal goals with corporate goals and can promote allegiance to the organization. It also shows a sincere effort to improve the individual. In his article, “Retention Report Card: Does Your Organization Make the Grade?”, Robert Morgan says, “One strategy for improvement would be to increase the development opportunities the organization provides for the future skills needed to do the work required for the next step on the career ladder.” (2004) This clearly indicates leadership development would be a step in the right direction in aligning current job needs with employee goals.
Team building helps promote a sense of belonging and solidifies loyalty to the company. People who know each and share a common bond work better together. This will create an environment where it’s pleasant to work and where employees are more inclined to help each other, especially during a crisis. Employees will be more inclined to remain at a company where they are valued as individuals and can count on the support of their co-workers in a pinch. (Herman, 2003)
The third strategic input, diversity, supports the concept of team building. Whether they are Blacks, Asians, Hispanics, women, older workers, workers with disabilities, or gay men and lesbians, diversity abounds in the workplace. A company who fails to cultivate this valuable resource puts itself at a disadvantage. Instead of their differences being disapproved of, people feel comfortable in an environment where those differences are admired. This type of workplace increases productivity, creativity, and improves the competitive edge. (Miller, 2002)
Aramark Corporation is a company that has worked to make the strategic inputs of leadership development, team building, and diversity an important part of their business strategy.
Aramark pursues their strategy of leadership development, team building and diversity initiatives because they really dont have another choice. According to the company website, “ARAMARK is a leading provider of a broad range of outsourced services to business, educational, healthcare and governmental institutions and sports, entertainment and recreational facilities.” (Aramark) With such a varied business, the company needs quality employees who have the flexibility to work in many environments. A significant portion of their business is in what are considered low skill, low pay areas. They do a lot of food service, lodging, and conference support activities. Not only are a lot of the workers low skill, low pay, but a significant portion of them are women and minorities. I have worked in and managed these types of activities and it can be hard to keep good people. Aramark has to compete for employees with places like McDonalds, Dennys, or Comfort Inn. While the pay may be comparable, Aramark has to offer a higher level of service to keep their clients which means their employees need to be better. Turnover in these types of jobs can be high. Higher turnover equates to higher costs and ultimately poorer service”human resources and bottom lines are connected.” (Herman) By team building, Aramark hopes to develop commitment to the company and encourage its employees to stay.
With such a high representation of minorities, its critical Aramark promote diversity. There is no way the company can survive by disenfranchising a large portion of its workforce. It has to encourage diverse individuals to apply and provide them with a comfortable work environment. Aramark also has to ensure these employees have opportunities to better themselves personally and professionally. The only way to manage such a work force is by having competent leadership. (Berta, 2003)
Aramark has realized that leaders are not born, they are made. The environment in which the leaders will operate is the best place to grow them. Those who have “risen from the ranks” are often the best leadership candidates. Aramarks leadership development initiatives not only further show company support for its workers career goals, it also makes good business sense. These initiatives are important to the company and I feel they are not just providing “lip service”, but have a sincere desire to meld them with their overall corporate strategy. Aramark’s vision on human resources is certainly the right way to go for the company, but they arent the only ones with this vision.
Throughout corporate America, companies are realizing their employees are a valuable resource that must be efficiently managed and effectively lead. Their goal is to hire the best workers they can and create the type of work environment that will encourage them to stay. (Berta) Organizations are realizing turnover is expensive and are working hard to recruit, develop, and retain quality employees. Flexible work schedules, beefing up rewards, improving training programs, and communicating more with employees are efforts a company can take to show they care. (Herman) Even companies you would think are not normally concerned with retention are jumping on the bandwagon. The Carmichael Company operates a laser tag operation called Adventure Zone and sends its employees to a modified version of Stephen Coveys program, “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.” The interesting thing is the company employs
{}{*p} I have never had a time machine. I have never heard of anyone being hired on that basis, but I know a few people who were fired on that basis. And they took the time and time went out to see what their options were.
You probably read this article and have heard that the company does not take any job applications. So what do you do? Well…if you think it is time to hire a job from your own company’s employee database, check out this answer:
{}{*p} Even though you might be shocked to learn that Apple would be your first choice for an employer based on an employee database, many companies still go for it even when they have employees from across the world. It is especially important that you learn the difference between the “source” database in Canada and the one in the U.S. Here’s a quick rundown of their employee database,
{}{*p} Although a single company does not have a hiring database, if you are interested in being able to work for a company from across the world, do check out the United States Employee Database. Your employer will likely have a “business related” employee database, which you can search through to find the best job candidates overseas or local. Some companies like Amazon, eBay, Google and many others also use the same employee database. Also, a lot of companies are now using cloud based databases. The most common example is the Yahoo Employee Database, which utilizes one database.
So what’s the big difference between an employee database and a business related employee database?
When it comes to employers, the big difference is that in Canada, if your employer doesn’t have a hiring database and you want them to make a choice between a business related database and a hiring database, you have to go with the job that gives you the biggest advantage: you get a huge benefit from the employee database.
[*Note: In this article, I originally said that Amazon and Google, which are cofounders of Amazon, use “source of income” instead of income through their payroll operations.] If you ask Amazon’s employees to sign with any company, you will see that their employee database is the largest and most important database on the planet. The main thing that makes the search for top search engines different is that when you search for a job somewhere, you’ll find it on the job database.
{}{*p} While many countries in the U.S. are considered to be very much like the United Kingdom on this count (the U.K. is by far the most populous U.K.-based country), in Canada it’s just not that close either. It’s almost every year that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is able to convince his country to adopt the Canadian government database with the approval of the Canada Chamber of Commerce, which basically makes the entire government based upon one company being the source of the database. This can be especially important if you work for a company that is in the process of acquiring several employees on your payroll.
In order for your employer to choose the right person for your hiring, you must hire someone with the “source of income” (i.e., a full-time employee):
Now, what does this say to you about having a single source of income (i.e., who you hire but never spend)?
In terms of what goes on in that employee database, it makes little or no sense to have multiple sources of income:
You either go with a company that is based on a single source of income, or you hire multiple people who are based on the same source of income. (B